Be perfect, as your Heavenly father
is perfect.
I’ve had two or three conversations
this week with groups of you about this gospel passage. It’s a tough one. And I’ve
spent a fair amount of time in study and in prayer about why it is so tough for
us to deal with a statement like this from Jesus. How can he expect us to be as
perfect as God? What on earth can Jesus mean by this?
I appreciated coming across this
explanation by David Lose, the President of Luther Seminary in Philadelphia. He
says this:
“When
we hear that command, most of us hear an injunction to a kind of moral
perfectionism. But that's not actually what the original language implies.
"Perfect," in this case, stems from telos, the Greek word
for "goal," "end," or "purpose." The sense of the
word is more about becoming what was intended, accomplishing one's God-given
purpose in the same way that God constantly reflects God's own nature and
purpose. Eugene Peterson's The Message gets closer to the
mark, I think, when he translates it, "You're kingdom subjects. Now live
like it. Live out your God-created identity."
Does that
let us off the hook with all the other things? Certainly not. But it does help us
get to the root of the issue. We can only do these other things -- repaying
evil with good, forgiving and praying for those who harm us -- to the degree
that we can live into our God-given identity as blessed and beloved children.
You can't give what you don't have, and so only those who have experienced love
can in turn share it with others.
Jesus is showing us how to become
wholehearted. When he says, “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”,
he is referring to us dedicating our lives to the greatest commandments – to
love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength – and to
love your neighbor as yourself. He says, “on these hang all the laws and the
prophets”. Live into your identity as God’s beloved child, with your whole
heart. Be wholehearted - in our love of God, in our love of neighbor, and in
our love of self.
Dave Peterson, of the H.E. Butt
Family Foundation, connects wholeheartedness with one of Jesus’ beatitudes –
Blessed are the pure in heart.
He says,
“Sören
Kierkegaard restated this beatitude in this way, "Purity of heart is to
will one thing." When Jesus speaks of a pure heart, he is referring to
more than emotions. To Jesus, the heart represented the integrated core of a
person--a kind of perfect synthesis of all thoughts, feelings, and will.
Imagine the independent-minded forces of heart, mind, and will lined up in
single file singing, "Hi ho, hi ho," like the Seven Dwarfs. It is, as
the saying goes, like herding cats.
When Woody
Allen was asked what he believed in, he said, "I believe in the power of
distraction." It's hard to have a pure heart when life has so many
distractions.
Here's what
Paul had to say about willing one thing,
“I do not
understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing
I hate ... I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the
good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Rom. 7:15-19)
So much for
purity of heart.
Some of the
challenges of this has to do with the maddening distraction of sin. And some of
it has to do with the 1,001 competing demands on my life. If I aim to sustain a
singular focus on God, how will I have time for everything else?
Dave
Peterson tells this story: A while back, I climbed Mount Rainier in western
Washington. A friend invited me to join him. For three days, my life was
singularly focused on the great mountain. Everything I ate, wore, and thought
had to do with the mountain. And then it occurred to me that the more I focused
on the mountain and the higher I climbed, the farther I could see. Ironically,
having a singular focus didn't shrink my world, it blew my world wide open.
Maybe that's what Jesus had in mind when he said, "Seek first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be added as
well."
To consider how being perfect is
related to being wholehearted, I also turned to the writings of Brené Brown. She is an American
scholar, author, and public speaker, who is currently a research professor at
the University of Houston Graduate
College of Social Work. She is the author of two #1 New York Times
Bestsellers: The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) and Daring
Greatly (2012).
Much of her research and writing
over the past twelve years has been focused on topics such as shame,
perfectionism, vulnerability, courage, and wholeheartedness.
Through her work, she helps us
shift from a focus on perfectionism to a focus on wholeheartedness.
She importantly describes shame as
the voice of perfection. She says that it is not the quest for perfection that
is so painful, but rather it is the failure to meet our unattainable expectations
that leads to that painful wash of shame that inevitably comes over us.
It’s important that she brings
shame into this conversation, because it directly relates to the life and death
of Jesus Christ, and in our salvation through him.
In Christ’s death on the cross, he
does not just take on the punishment for our sins, he does not just take on our
guilt, but he dies the death of ultimate humiliation, of crucifixion, in order to
take away our shame. And then - he conquers sin, conquers guilt, conquers
shame, conquers death, forever and ever. The power of these is taken away in
his resurrection.
So now and forever, there is
someone who does not see you the way you see yourself. There is someone who has
dealt with guilt and shame on your behalf. There is someone who already loves
you the way you are called to love yourself, the way you are called to love
your neighbor, to love your enemy. That someone is Jesus the Christ, God in
flesh, God with us. The almighty God of the universe died so that you could let
go of your own fear of imperfection, your own fear of failure, and you could be
freed to love yourself the way that the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, loves you already. Unconditionally. Not expecting perfection from you
but calling you to love perfectly, wholeheartedly, completely. Calling you to
receive the grace, mercy, and forgiveness that has already been given to you as
a free gift. Calling you to live in that light, wholeheartedly.
Perfection is not achieved through
perfectionism. Perfection is achieved through wholeheartedness, through
self-compassion, which leads to self-giving, which is the foundation of loving
your neighbor as yourself, without stopping to consider the worthiness of your
neighbor, your enemy, or yourself. Because God does not withhold the sun or the
rain from anyone. God loves us all unconditionally. And when I say “us all”, I
don’t just mean all the members of NLPC. I don’t just mean the worldwide
community of believers. God loves us all, prodigals and obedient children,
believers and nonbelievers, doubters, sinners and saints, perfectionists and
habitual failures. All are God’s beloved.
So when Jesus says, “you have heard
it said…but I say to you…”, what he means is that obeying the law is not what
it is about. Transcending the law, going to its essential intent, its
underlying love-based purpose, is what it is about.
As Brian McLaren says in “We Make
the Road By Walking”,
“Jesus was not promoting
unthinking conformity to tradition, to the law;
and
he was not defying tradition or law, either.
Instead, he was promoting a third
way –
to
discern and fulfill the highest intent of the tradition, of the law –
even
if it means breaking the details of the tradition or law in the process.
Jesus transcends the law,
transcends the tradition, and takes it to its essential intent, its underlying
love-based purpose, that purpose which was hidden or even misunderstood when it
was originally written – God’s law, written in human language, interpreted
based on limited understanding.
What God really meant is what Jesus
comes to fulfill.
So we see Jesus healing on the
Sabbath. Jesus picking wheat to eat on the Sabbath. Jesus teaching us to turn
the other cheek. Jesus teaching us to renounce what or whoever makes you sin.
Jesus going way above and beyond what was written.
Jesus is transcending the systems,
and in so doing he models the way for all of us, to interpret the laws of God
with the eyes of Christ, using the lens of love, and to reach out to others with
the compassion that Christ has shown to us,
taking away our failure and shame,
abolishing our sin and guilt,
ending death’s grip on us forever.
Here’s a visual representation of
what a life of wholeheartedness looks like:
I invite you to take with you the
cards the children gave out to you earlier, and to keep them with you this
week, praying and considering and acting on just what that means for you in
these days of Lent.
Because indeed, by the grace of God
-
"You
are God's beloved child. Be what you have been called." (note: words on cards handed out by children to congregation)
Amen.
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